Amnesty International and Human Rights Activism in Postwar Britain, 1945-1977

Tom Buchanan is Professor of Modern British and European History at the University of Oxford. He is the author of The Spanish Civil War and the British Labour Movement (1991), Britain and the Spanish Civil War (1997), and The Impact of the Spanish Civil War on Britain: War, Loss and Memory (2007). He has also published Europe's Troubled Peace, 1945 to the present (2006/2012), East Wind: China and the British Left, 1925–1976 (2012) and his most recent publication is a co-edited book on the centenary of the Balkan Wars titled War in the Balkans (2015).

• Introduction; 1. Dawn: 1934–50; 2. Africa, decolonisation and human rights in the 1950s; 3. Political imprisonment and human rights, 1945–64; 4. The early years of Amnesty International, 1961–4; 5. 'The crisis of growth', Amnesty International 1964–68; 6. 1968: the UN Year for Human Rights; 7. Torture states: 1967–75; 8. 'All things come to those who wait': the later 1970s; Conclusion. The winds of history.

'This is a major intervention in the study of human rights. Buchanan's enthralling history of Amnesty International is superbly researched and written. It explores one of the key organizations involved in developing both the conceptual and practical meaning of human rights – itself one of the defining terms of the post-war period. Transnational in its range across the British empire, Chile, Greece and beyond, it offers refreshing new perspectives on British political culture from the 1940s to 1970s.' Lawrence Black, University of York